First off let me just say I am happily still working on my sign project, as is my daughter but since I really should have thought harder about my daughter’s sign we have changed direction and now I have a few more letters to cut out. Oh well.
In the meantime, I would like to relate a slightly different tale. It has been my pleasure of the past year to watch a number of true craftsmen at work. The dedication of the Korean Bell Garden Pavilion at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens was last w...

In the last shop update, I briefly mentioned a grooving plane that did not work so well. The idea was to have a tool that could quickly make the grooves in the bottom of draw and box stock to accept the drawer/box bottom. The new design really rocks, so much that I made three sizes (widths): 1/8”, 3/16”, 1/4”. Although these are intended for making the grooves on drawer and box sides, I have been discovering more uses for the flexible design of these planes:
Shop Jou...

My eleven-year-old student finished up his Mother’s Day Box last Thurs. The box has been a three-to-four month process. He’s learned a lot…especially how to fix broken parts.
The full design & build process can be found here.

There have been many times where I could have used a good scratch awl. They’re great for:
—Making pilot holes for nails, brads and screws to prevent splitting (see Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings by Aldren Watson. This text is within arm’s reach of your workbench isn’t it?) Yes, gimlets would work too.—Scribing lines with a try square during layout operations—Puncturing your beer can of choice to shotgun it
So while tool hunting on an antiquing outing o...

6 years ago, when my interest in woodworking began to peak again, I realized the last time I had done a serious woodworking project was almost 20 years prior. Back then, we had high school woodshop classes with well defined goals and projects and a lot of machinery at our fingertips. But the years had gone by and many of those shop lessons had faded or were forgotten altogether. I barely remembered the basic safety instructions that had been hammered into our heads.
I really didn’t k...

I thought it would be a good time to take a break from rehabbing vintage tools to actually build a project with them. So I pulled a copy of “Basic Box Making,” by Doug Stowe from my bookshelf. I’ve always liked this book and have admired his creativity and craftsmanship.
I like to keep things simple. So to me, that means starting at the beginning of Stowe’s book. That has the advantage of slowly learning new skills in layers as projects become more complex. Flipping to the first ...

There’s a new post on the Little Good Pieces Blog: Riving Brake – Part 2. I cut and assemble my version of Peter Galbert’s riving brake. Check it out!
http://littlegoodpieces.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/riving-brake-part-2/

Whether you buy new or used woodworking hand tools, is entirely up to you. I didn’t write these blog posts to convince anyone otherwise. I simply wrote about my experiences. Everyone has a different perspective on tools, woodworking, and how they like to spend their time. I agree that tuning up a perfectly good tool from 1910 is a worthwhile endeaver but like everything it has it’s break even point. If it took me a week’s worth of work to do it, (or much more time than I...